“My dear, there are enough of the natives that I am obliged to receive; these two more would be the death of me; and with your permission, we will deprive ourselves of the pleasure.”
“You are the mistress in your own house,” said the President, “but we shall make many enemies. The Rogrons will join the Opposition, which hitherto has had no solidity in Provins. That Rogron is already hanging on to Baron Gouraud and Vinet the lawyer.”
“Heh!” said Mélanie, with a smile, “they will do you service then. Where there are no enemies, there is no triumph. A Liberal conspiracy, an illegal society, a fight of some kind, would bring you into the foreground.”
The President looked at his young wife with a sort of alarmed admiration.
Next day everyone at Madame Garceland’s said in everyone else’s ear that the Rogrons had not had a success at Madame Tiphaine’s, and her remark about the inn-parlor was much applauded. Madame Tiphaine took a month before returning Mademoiselle Sylvie’s visit. This rudeness is much remarked on in the country. Then, at Madame Tiphaine’s, when playing boston with the elder Madame Julliard, Sylvie made a most unpleasant scene about a splendid misère hand, on which her erewhile mistress caused her to lose—maliciously and on purpose, she declared. Sylvie, who loved to play nasty tricks on others, could never accept a return in kind. Madame Tiphaine, therefore, set the example of making up the card-parties before the Rogrons arrived, so that Sylvie was reduced to wandering from table to table, watching others play, while they looked at her askance with meaning glances. At old Madame Julliard’s, whist was now the game, and Sylvie could not play it. The old maid at last understood that she was an outlaw, but without understanding the reason. She believed herself to be an object of jealousy to everybody.
Ere long the Rogrons were asked nowhere; but they persistently spent their evenings at various houses. Clever people made game of them, without venom, quite mildly, leading them to talk utter nonsense about the ovolos in their house, and about a certain cellaret for liqueurs, matchless in Provins. Meanwhile they gave themselves the final blow. Of course, they gave a few sumptuous dinners, as much in return for the civilities they had received as to show off their splendor. The guests came solely out of curiosity. The first dinner was given to Monsieur and Madame Tiphaine, with whom the Rogrons had not once dined; to Messieurs and Mesdames Julliard, father and son, mother and daughter-in-law; to Monsieur Lesourd, Monsieur the Curé, Monsieur and Madame Galardon. It was one of those provincial spreads, where the guests sit at table from five o’clock till nine. Madame Tiphaine had introduced the grand Paris style to Provins, the well-bred guests going away as soon as coffee had been served. She had some friends that evening at home, and tried to steal away, but the Rogrons escorted the couple to the very street; and when they returned, bewildered at having failed to keep the President and his wife, the other guests explained Madame Tiphaine’s good taste, and imitated it with a promptitude that was cruel in a country town.
“They will not see our drawing-room lighted up!” cried Sylvie, “and candlelight is like rouge to it.”
The Rogrons had hoped to give their guests a surprise. No one hitherto had been admitted to see this much-talked-of house. And all the frequenters of Madame Tiphaine’s drawing-room impatiently awaited her verdict as to the marvels of the “Palais Rogron.”
“Well,” said little Madame Martener, “you have seen the Louvre? Tell us all about it.”
“But all—like the dinner—will not amount to much.”
“What is it like?”
“Well, the front door, of which we were, of course, required to admire the gilt-iron window frames that you all know, opens into a long passage through the house, dividing it unequally, since there is but one window to the street on the right, and two on the left. At the garden end this passage has a glass door to steps leading down to the lawn, a lawn with a decorative pedestal supporting a plaster cast of the Spartacus, painted to imitate bronze. Behind the kitchen the architect has contrived a little pantry under the staircase, which we were not spared seeing. The stair, painted throughout like yellow-veined marble, is a hollow spiral, Just like the stairs that in a café lead from the ground floor to the entresol. This trumpery structure of walnut wood, really dangerously light, and with banisters picked out with brass, was displayed to us as one of the seven new wonders of the world. The way to the cellars is beneath.
“On the other side of the passage, looking on the street, is the dining-room, opening by folding doors into the drawing-room, of the same size, but looking on to the garden.”
“So there is no hall?” said Madame Auffray.
“The hall, no doubt, is the long passage where you stand in a draught,” replied Madame Tiphaine. “We have had the eminently national, liberal, constitutional, and patriotic notion,” she went on, “of making use only of wood grown in France! In the dining-room, the floor, laid in a neat pattern, is of walnut wood. The sideboards, table, and chairs are also in walnut. The window curtains are of white cotton with red borders, looped back with vulgar ropes over enormous pegs with elaborate dull-gilt rosettes, the mushroom-like object standing out against a reddish paper. These magnificent curtains run on rods ending in huge scrolls, and are held up by lions’ claws in stamped brass, one at the top of each pleat.
“Over one of the sideboards is a regular café clock, draped, as it were, with a sort of napkin in bronze gilt, an idea that quite enchants the Rogrons. They tried to make me admire this device; and I could find nothing better to say than that if it could ever be proper to hang a napkin round a clock
